Grant Has USF Hiring for Study

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By St. Petersburg Times

October 19, 2009

Thanks to a $1.46 million grant, the University of South Florida will boost research into ways to help people struggling with both mental illness and substance abuse.

The two-year award, will allow USF to hire three new assistant professors, jump-start and support their research and plug them into a high-tech network of other researchers. It could yield new ways to help keep those at-risk, including veterans and women who have suffered physical or sexual trauma, out of prison.

"There's quite a large population" with the double problem of mental illness and addiction, and there's "not enough information about how to work effectively with them," said professor Roger Peters, chairman of the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy in USF's College of Behavioral and Community Sciences.

USF aims to use the money from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to hire three assistant professors by January.

Over the past two decades, USF has helped the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Corrections develop treatment programs for inmates. Its new initiative will build on that start, and look at doing research that can be applied by the criminal justice system for use with inmates who have the dual disorders.

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